19: Downhill Slide

We move back today to Latin America, and then on to the Middle East, where some of the next important stages of the Cold War occurred. The purpose of our nineteenth class is to think through the factors that contributed to the increasingly difficult U.S. relations with Latin America and the Middle East in the 1950s. We will examine the rationales for the first U.S. covert operations of this period in Guatemala and Iran. After reviewing how matters turned out in Guatemala and their effect on U.S. relations with Latin America, we will examine what stimulated and guided U.S. policy in the Middle East, an increasingly important region, and appraise the repercussions of those policies. What was the importance of Dwight Eisenhower as an American foreign policymaker? What, in particular, is he remembered for? Did he have foreign policy triumphs? Flaws?